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2012-07-22

German Media Familiarisation Tour to Maldives

The Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation coordinated a familiarisation tour to the Maldives for a group of four journalists representing various media targeting the German Travel Trade, Luxury market as well as the general consumer via daily News papers of the German speaking market from 7-14 June 2012.

Fam trips are a valuable tool through which journalists are able to better relay information about a destination after having experienced the product first hand. Hence, the main purpose of arranging such media fam trips is to bring journalists to Maldives to experience the product first hand in order to garner positive editorial publicity about the destination. Unlike paid advertising, the publicity generated through media relations efforts is the editorial opinion of the writer, which is often also considered more valuable than paid advertising.

The hosting resorts for the fam trip are Dusit Thani (Baa Atoll), Zitahli Kudafunafaru (Noonu Atoll), Adaaran Select Meedhupparu (Raa Atoll) and Sheraton Maldives (Kaafu Atoll). The group also visited Male’ and held a meeting with deputy Minister Maleeh Jamaal during which Destination information, as well as specific topics of interest such as information on future developments were shared.

Considering the decline in arrivals from some of the major markets in Europe and the bleak forecasts due to the economic crisis looming in Europe, Germany has maintained a positive outlook in terms of its arrival performance to the Maldives in the past months. 46,236 arrivals were registered from Germany by the end of May 2012. This is a 19.3 percent growth compared to the same period in 2011. With these favourable figures Germany emerges as the largest market to the Maldives from Europe and the second largest generating market to the destination as a whole.

Such media visits help Maldives to strengthen the positive image of the destination as well as to boost the arrivals from Germany to reach the destination’s target of attracting a million tourists by the end of this year.